Washington Street
You are eight years old and already lonely. You measure your walk home from school by sidewalk squares. Your feet have memorized the path. You are walking to the house on Washington Street where the steps to the porch are steep. Your mother greets you at the door, her face as familiar as wind.
Now, years later, you look at a photograph of her from that time; her brown eyes smile, her dark hair pulled back from her luminous face. You marvel at her beauty, showing the photograph to friends—anyone who will look: “See. See my mother. This is what she looked like then”—as if she is someone different, someone you don’t remember, someone you never saw before.
In the house on Washington Street, that same mother—the one in the photograph—does the dishes by hand. It is 1964. She gives you a towel. “Here. You dry.”
In her 80’s now, her hair gone gray, her shoulders stooped, her loneliness beats in rhythm with your own. You hear her voice over the miles, and you listen to her stories—endless stories of what ifs. You ask, “Do you remember the house on Washington Street?” And she answers, “Of course I do.”
If you go looking, you will find sidewalk squares to measure. You will find steep concrete steps leading to stoops and into houses. They are everywhere. But something about that house on Washington Street calls you, reminds you of something you just cannot name. You see it in her eyes when you look at the photo. You want someone to tell you the story of that house and her in it. You were there, yet you need someone to tell the story.
You stare a long time at the photo. Her beauty startles you.
House
You received it as a gift—a ceramic house to set on your mantle or on a shelf or on a table. You hold the house in the palm of your hand—a triangle roof and a square base. No windows. No doors. Just the shape. Simple. The house a child would draw if you said, “Draw a house.” Or the house in a dream with no entrance and no exit. You’re just suddenly there. In the box of it, or you’re looking at it from a distance. Or there it is in a coloring book. You color it blue or brown. Maybe you add windows and doors. Even a dormer. And then the house starts getting complicated, and you can no longer hold it in your hand or remember your childhood or even dream it. Suddenly the house becomes a cape or a colonial or a bungalow. And there are too many words to remember, and too many memories to hold onto, and too much loss. The world is no longer the world you knew, and houses stretch for miles: triangles atop boxes. And you want to hold one in your hand. More than anything, you want to hold a house in your hand. And you reach out for one, but it stays just beyond your grasp. Never simple anymore. It is not the house in the coloring book. It is instead a structure full of rooms and doorways and hallways. The hallways are the hardest. They are narrow and long. You walk down one and push open a door. You hear the creak of its hinges and swear that one day you will oil them. You look inside the room, and maybe there’s a bed and a desk. A lamp sits on a table beside the bed. Maybe it is lit. Maybe a book waits by the lamp. Maybe a person, someone you love, holds the book. And that is familiar. And you leave the hallway and walk toward the familiar. Or you close that door and continue down the hallway and open another door. Its hinges do not creak, and the room behind the door looks like no room you’ve ever seen. All the windows on all the walls are wide open. Wind blows curtains up like wings. The wind takes you, and suddenly you are out the window and flying. You have wings. And nothing is familiar save for the houses below you—so far away you can only see their shapes—triangles and boxes. You want to hold one in your hand.
winter
Winter is funny, the way it happens gradually—just like aging—it startles you one day. The texture of the air changes. Shadows appear where before there was light. And when the snows come, the branches sag closer and closer to the frozen ground. The trees go gray, the sky goes gray, even the dirt, the walkways, the streets—all gray. And when a cardinal or a blue jay appear, you feel such deep joy, as if color were just invented.
Train
Leaves glowed red and yellow under the morning sun. She could hear strains of Billie Holiday in her head—that unmistakable voice. “Body and Soul”—that was the tune. Other commuter’s walked the same path to the same train, but they all had different destinations: one train to many places. They moved through the turnstiles—all together and so separate, and then down the stairs to the tracks. Crisp air. Autumn air. City air. Soon enough, she felt the familiar rumble of wheels as the train approached. All the commuters lined up, positioning themselves, waiting for the doors to slap open and closed long enough to admit them. She stepped onto the first car and sat on the long bench-like seat just under the windows. The train started up again, and she watched the blur of buildings, the sun lit brick, go by. On the wall of the train posters advertised: attend this college, watch this show. One poster displayed an old photo of the Beatles—young and so full of possibility. Of the four of them, George stood out the most—his face shining. The train slowed toward its next stop. She looked out to the buildings and saw the graffiti: “There is no god” and “The world ends now.” The train stopped. Its doors slapped open and closed. A few stepped off, and a few stepped on. And then the rumble of wheels again, the blur of buildings. She looked into George Harrison’s eyes.
“Chant with me,” he seemed to say. “Bodyandsoulbodyandsoulbodyandsoul.”
She concentrated on the movement of the one train and its many destinations. Billie Holiday. George Harrison. This man. That woman. The opening and closing of doors. The rumble of wheels. Body and Soul.
Don't Drive Into Water
She rounded the curve and saw that water covered the road ahead. Her father always told her, “Don’t drive into water.” At the time, it had seemed too obvious, “Of course I won’t drive into water. Who would drive into water?” But at that moment, staring at the highway, there was no way to tell how deep it was. Should she risk it? This was the only route she knew, and to turn back now would mean returning to where she had started. And then what? She moved her foot from the brake to the gas pedal, but her father’s voice came through again, “Don’t drive into water”—almost as if he sat next to her, in the passenger seat. His voice was that clear. She looked to her right, close to believing he would be there. Of course he wasn’t. She had just that morning stood at his closet staring at his shirts hanging there. They made her cry, as if they had life, as if the sleeves would rise up and wrap her into the kind of hug only he could give. “Don’t drive into water”—there was that voice again. His unmistakable cadence. “No more crying, damn it,” she said aloud, even as the tears welled up. She stared ahead at the road, her windshield wipers clacking, the rain steady and relentless. She should listen to her father; she knew that. But in that instant of rain and clouds and memory, she hit the gas. She drove right into the water. She heard its swoosh under her tires, felt the pull of its power underneath the car. Through it all, the tires stayed on the road. The car made it to the other side, where she could see the pavement and the yellow line, where she could keep going to God knows where now that the world had changed forever.